SERIES: The Dawnmeister Chronicles
AUTHOR: Gareth
SUMMARY: Dawn writes about 'Afterwards'.
DISCLAIMER: Dawn and co are all owned by one Joss Whedon. Anyone knowing another Joss Whedon should hand them in at the nearest law enforcement establishment as soon as possible.
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: 'The Gift', BIGTIME. You have been warned.
ARCHIVE: List archives are welcome to it. Other people please ask.
DISTRIBUTION: Sure, as long as you keep this header intact.
FEEDBACK: Hell yeah :) I don't want to churn loads of stuff out then find out you all think it's crap :) Send to feedback[at]lostscrolls.net
NOTES: Although strictly speaking this shouldn't be on this list, I'm claiming the 'OT' tag in the heading lets me off ;)
BLATANT HIT GRABBER: Rumours abound of a special extract from the Dawnmeister Chronicles that ties in with my Rebecca fic. According to the rumours there is a very obscure link hidden somewhere on the Lost Scrolls website (http://www.lostscrolls.net/).

The Dawnmeister Chronicles

Epilogue: Year Five

Dear Diary,

I'm still numb. Two weeks it's been and I'm still numb. I can't believe we buried Mom earlier in the year, and now I've buried Buffy. And I'm not real. Well, obviously I'm real in some sense, cuz I'm writing this. But I don't exist because fourteen years ago Mom and Dad got frisky, I exist because last Autumn some monks decided to change reality and hide this Interdimensional Key inside a human being that up until then had never existed. By changing reality they made everyone else remember that human as if they had always been there. That human was me. Is me. I was created because these monks decided that the best way for the Key to be protected was to give it a family, make it part of the Slayer's family so the Slayer would protect it. Dah, yeah, great idea.

The monks coulda destroyed the Key instead of turning it into me. If they had, Buffy would still be alive. You see, this Key was the only way for Glory (a Hell-God from Dimension 8572 or something) to get home. Make the Key bleed, the Key's blood opens a portal joining all dimensions together. Not good. With the portal open all the dimensions start to merge, creating total chaos and turning Earth into hell. Once the portal opens, only stopping the flow of the Key's blood would close it. Put another way, to close the portal, I had to die. Of course, the portal was opened - anything else wouldn't be dramatic enough for Sunnydale. I was ready to die. I think I was, anyway. I was about to throw myself into the portal, to give it all of my blood, when Buffy stopped me. She'd figured out some loophole in the rules. Something about her blood and my blood being the same. So she threw herself into the portal, and it worked. The portal closed, taking her life as its price instead of mine. Now she's gone.

It's too much for a fourteen year old to take in, particularly a ten-month old fourteen year old, even one who is nearly fifteen. I've figured out that bit, at least. Well, I think I have. The monks changed reality so I was suddenly here, right, as if I'd always been here. In that case, once they changed it, I HAD always been here. They didn't change reality ten months ago, they changed it fifteen and a half years ago or however long it was, so that Mom and Dad did get frisky. I've talked this through with Willow and Giles, and they're both kinda scared at how philosophical it is. Willow then talked to Tara about it, and Tara thought I was kinda young to be getting to those sorta questions but she could understand why. She said there was no right or wrong to it, there was no way of telling for real when I came into existence, and that what I believed about it was most important. They all remember me always being around, so there's no reason to think otherwise. Or something. Basically I think what she was trying to tell me was that the truth came second to what was right for me. And I have to believe that this is right. I know it might not be true, but I also know it might be true.

Anyway, as I guess you know, since I burned you when I found out, this whole thing about my existence had me kinda freaked. This is the first time I've written since then. I still feel numb but I've decided to do what Buffy told me to and 'live' - and what I got out of my talks with Giles is that if I'm going to do that, and be real, then I have to accept who I am. That's why I've been thinking so much about the existence thing. I went through the burned remains of my old diaries to see what I could find, since real or not, those diary entries are part of me. I only found four bits that were fully intact. There was the first one I wrote after we moved to Sunnydale. Then there was the stuff I wrote when Angel lost his soul and was drawing pictures of me. The later stuff was all pretty well burnt, but I found stuff I wrote just after Faith went bad and other stuff I wrote about Spike just after that spell of Willow's that made me the Slayer. They're not the big milestone happenings like my first period or my first kiss, but they are key points in my life - some of the times that found me growing up a bit.

I'm not really ready to write how I feel about Buffy and her death yet. I know some of it's in here, but not all of it. Numbness is still the word that seems to describe it best. Before the funeral I cried every morning when I woke up, but I haven't cried since. I need to know what's going to happen to me before I can think about her. Giles is trying to become my legal guardian but it's all complicated since he's British. Spike would make a good guardian for me - we're close, and he knows how to look out for me - but since technically he's dead there's not much...what was the phrase Giles used...legal recourse for him to adopt me like that.

I spoke to Faith a couple days ago. She managed to bag a phone call from prison somehow, I'm not sure how that works. She said it wasn't a problem but I get the feeling it was a bit. She told me she'd been thinking about the comic books she used to read and told me to go buy some collected editions. Well, no. She told me to get Xander to take me to find some collected editions. So I did. When I told Xander what I wanted to buy he bit his lip and turned away for a minute. When he turned back his eyes were red. I guess he knew what Faith was thinking. So anyway today I finished reading them all - "The Death Of Superman", "World Without A Superman", and "The Return Of Superman". I guess Faith's trying to tell me she thinks somehow Buffy is gonna come back. I can't think about that though. Maybe Buffy will come back. Angel went to Hell and came back, and some other Vampire was brought back from the dead. We even almost raised Mom! I can believe that it's possible, but I can't sit around waiting for it to happen. I have to live my life, not wait for Buffy to be able to live hers.

I'm crying now. Maybe the numbness is fading.

I'm crying now.

Dawn Summers X X